I got up at 5:10 and headed north. Since it was supposed to get into the mid 70s I wanted to get an early start on the day. When I parked my truck the thermometer read 37 degrees. I welcomed the chilly morning as I stepped out of the truck.
I made quick time to the first camera. I wasn’t surprised to have a bear on it. Luckily this camera wasn’t disturbed by my black furry friend. After transferring the images to another SD card I headed to the next camera. When I got on the flat it’s located on I searched for a couple of scrapes from last year that had licking branches. I wanted to put the camera I pulled the other night in that spot. I found two nice scrapes and placed the camera in the first one. I don’t know what to expect. Hopefully things will follow suit and the deer will mark the licking branch with their scent right through the entire fall. Time will tell.
As I got near my second camera I could see the camera facing in the opposite direction from where I had left it. I knew a bear had gotten its hands on it. After opening it up and looking at the card I found a lot of deer and bear pictures. Nothing really stood out to me and a lot of the pictures were hard to see. I’m not sure I like that camera too much. The quality of the pictures is poor compared to the images from my other cameras. I changed the batteries since the ones in the camera were dead.
I spend the rest of the morning covering some ground. I took down a stand, the only stand I have in there, and moved it to the edge of a swamp. I have a lot of pictures of a spike buck, a fawn and big doe from the middle of the summer up until now. I think this place could get good during the rut. There are a lot of old rubs and scrapes along the edge of the swamp.
When I got to the last few cameras I had in the woods I was a little irritated when I found them on the ground. Bears had gotten to both of them. I might have to get some bear boxes to protect the cameras. I believe one of these cameras has been destroyed. I have a lot of fog in it. I got a picture of a nice Adirondack 8-pointer on one camera before the bear tossed it to the ground. I won’t be back there until the end of October. Something tells me the cameras won’t make it that far, but I have to hope they will. Here are a few pictures from my journey.
This bear is responsible for tossing one of the cameras to the ground.
He’s not a monster, but he’s still a nice ADK buck.